The
CPT plans new torture-concealment visits

It
has come to our notice that this year the "EuropeanCommittee for
the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman orDegrading
Treatment or Punishment (CPT)" amongst others,again
has "visits" in German psychiatric hospitals on theagenda.
Since 01.01.2009 by ratification
of the UNConvention
on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities inthe
Federal Republic of Germany, psychiatric coercivemeasures
are a crime. The Convention requires in Article 14„that
the existence of a disability shall in no case justify adeprivation
of liberty". The German “mentally ill laws”(PsychKG) which permit forced
incarceration on the groundsof
a disability, an alleged "mental illness", thus becomeillegitimate
and illegal special laws that must be abolished. [1]The
UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilitiesconfirmed what is stated in
the Universal Declaration ofHuman
Rights since 1948 and also according to theEuropean
Human Rights Convention of 1953 this appliesanyway
to: Coercive measures by psychiatry,incarceration,
forced treatment and incapacitation, areworldwide
and in all cases a serious human rightsviolation,
primarily deprivation of liberty, bodily injury, violation of personal
rights and human dignity.

In addition,
coercive psychiatric treatment corresponds to the criteria of torture,
as defined bythe “United
Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or DegradingTreatment
or Punishment” which was adopted by the General Assembly
of the United Nations on 10December
1984: The inmates in the psychiatric prisons are especially subjected
to severe physicaland
mental pain or suffering by the forced application of psychiatric
drugs and electric shocks (socalled"ECT").
The intentional and forced treatment, intimidation and coercion
in closed psychiatrywards
is aimed at obtaining the confession of "illness insight" and thus
to obtain "compliance." The socalledformer
"non-illness-insighted" should be made tame and (apparently) willing
to accept"treatment".
This takes place on the basis of discrimination and slander by labeling
people as"mentally ill“.
This suffering is caused at the instigation of and with the explicit
consent of members ofthe
public service. The torture practiced
by psychiatry is not a matter of individual cases or anoccasional
abuse of power by the psychiatric staff, but is the rule in every
closed institution,because
in Germany the psychiatric coercive laws such as the PsychKG still
exist, even though theyshould
have been abolished at the very latest in the course of the ratification
of the UN Convention onthe
Rights of Persons with Disabilities. [2]

Similarly, just as the will-breaking
entry into the body during a rape, forced treatment in psychiatrycannot be legalized, even if,
as some "experts" believe, it is "reviewed"
or "controlled" by a judge.[3]Such "human rights experts"
position themselves outside the basic principles of human rights
in orderto protect the
psychiatric torture measures. A rape too remains a rape, even if
it is ordered, reviewedand
monitored by a judge, executed by a doctor and called "medical treatment".

The "European Committee for
the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment orPunishment“(CPT) is by
one seventh (6 of 42) staffed with psychiatrists and is therefore
biased.[4]Instead of
acting against the psychiatric violence and torture immanent in
the psychiatric system andthe
psychiatric special laws which were also designated by the UN High
Commissioner for HumanRights
(UNHCHR) in October 2008 as "intrinsically
discriminatory" and "unlawful"
laws[5], and based onthis
reasoning, to reprimand the concerning governments of the Council
of Europe, the CPT sees its"first
priority" at most as being to „ascertain
whether there are any indications of the deliberate illtreatmentof
patients. “[6] Contrary to statements by the UN and
its High Commissioner, the CPT is ofthe
opinion that "in any psychiatric establishment, the restraint of
agitated and/or violent patients mayon
occasion be necessary" and it also approves the use of"straps,
strait-jackets, etc.".[7]

For these reasons, with regard
to the individual case- inspections organized by the CPT, the visits
onlyto individual psychiatric
torture crime scenes, which the CPT trivializes as "some
places of detention",[8]
which only "to be fully effective" "should
be both regular and unannounced" and where "theauthority concerned should
be empowered to interview detained persons in private"
[9] [10], we namethem
for what they are: Veiled torture
measures, which should continue to nurture the illusionthat
torture measures could still be legitimized by a law and by a judge's
decision and that theappearance
of legality would be justified.

Thus the CPT has become our
political opponent, by turning its "individual case- inspections"
and itsshould-be-unannounced
"visits", which are moreover connected to recommendations to psychiatrywith regard to "enhanced" control
techniques[12], into torture perfectioning measures, thereby making
acaricature of both
the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the
comments by theUN High
Commissioner concerning this matter and also damaging the entire
United Nations and theidea
of universal human rights. We need neither this torture-veiling-committee,
nor its visits and we willnot
act as advisors to such a committee or be complicit with the corresponding
assistance to theconcealment
of torture of psychiatric inmates. However, should the "European
Committee for thePrevention
of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT)"
in a first step beprepared
to take a stand and fight the illegal ongoing psychiatric special
laws of the governments ofGermany
and the other countries of the Council of Europe which have ratified
the UN Convention onthe
Right s of Persons with Disabilities, a collaboration would certainly
enter into the realm of thepossible.